Almost.
Tommy Pham’s heels weren’t far from touching the center-field wall Friday night when he hauled in the fly ball David Freese had skied toward the warning track. Freese was 5 feet, his teammates guessed, from a walk-off slam against his former team, the St. Louis Cardinals. Elias Diaz then waved at a slider to end the 11-10 game and the comeback.
“If that was earlier in the game, we’re walk-off grand-slam winners,” remarked right-hander Trevor Williams, who allowed three homers in three-plus rocky innings. “Baseball is weird.”
With six outs left, the Pirates trailed by eight runs. A come-from-behind win would have matched their largest comeback in franchise history. Instead, they suffered their sixth consecutive defeat, this one in perhaps more heartbreaking fashion than the previous five.
After a five-run eighth returned the Pirates within striking distance, they loaded the bases with one out in the ninth. Left-hander Zach Duke walked Josh Bell, forcing home a run. Freese hit a sacrifice fly off Seung-Hwan Oh. Diaz fouled off two pitches, bringing the count to two balls, two strikes. Sean Rodriguez danced off third base. On the sixth pitch, Diaz chased a slider low and away.
“Unfortunately, I missed two strikes down the middle [earlier],” Diaz said. “That was my fault.”
What doomed this game wasn’t the strikeout. It was a bad start which worsened as it wore on.
Rookie starter Williams, steady to the tune of a 2.95 ERA in his six previous starts, didn’t have it Friday. He survived only three-plus innings and surrendered eight runs on seven hits and two walks. After allowing only five home runs in his previous 17 starts — and nine homers all season — Williams served up three in the span of the Cardinals’ first 12 at-bats.
“It [stinks] getting punched in the face again,” he said. “but it’s going to happen in my career.”
In the past week, the Pirates (58-64) played themselves to the perimeter — if not entirely out of — the playoff picture. After winning a series opener in Toronto, they owned a .500 record, had won seven of their previous nine games and were three games behind the first-place Chicago Cubs. Six losses later, the Pirates now are 6½ games back and firmly in fourth place in the National League Central Division.
“We’re fighting, but you’ve got to win,” Freese said. “When you’re playing teams battling for the postseason, you’ve got to do all three aspects of the game at your best level. We’re just not doing enough collectively to get Ws on the board.”
Poor pitching has fueled the skid, and spurts of too-little, too-late offense haven’t sufficed. The Pirates opponents’ run totals in the past week are 7, 7, 3, 7, 11 and 11. Friday, the Cardinals (63-59) scored in six innings. Tommy Pham, Matt Carpenter and Paul DeJong, who had three hits, homered. Six of the Cardinals’ 13 hits went for extra bases.
The Pirates found pop Friday. They entered the game claiming fewer home runs in August (10) than Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton (11) and tied with the Texas Rangers’ Joey Gallo (10). They pulled ahead with solo homers from Josh Harrison and Freese off right-hander Carlos Martinez and Max Moroff’s two-run blast late, but they fell fast and far behind St. Louis.
The Cardinals offensive surge had some of the same fireworks as the previous one. Pham, who smoked a tape-measure shot to the left-field rotunda Thursday, greeted Williams in the first inning Friday with a solo home run. Harrison answered with his second first-inning homer in as many nights, setting a career-high with his 14th this season.
The St. Louis lineup clicked in the second inning. Yadier Molina doubled. Randal Grichuk walked. Greg Garcia shot an RBI single to the opposite field, giving the Cardinals a lead they would not relinquish. With two outs, Williams aimed a sinker low in the strike zone, and Carpenter walloped it to center field, cracking the game open with a three-run homer.
After DeJong’s leadoff homer in the third, the bullpen stirred. Left-hander Steven Brault, called up earlier in the day from Class AAA Indianapolis, loosened. Brault was not called upon to relieve Williams until the fourth inning, following Grichuk’s leadoff infield single and Garcia’s base hit.
On Brault’s first pitch, Martinez dropped a sacrifice bunt. Brault hurried forward, sliding to field the ball and throw to home plate, yet Grichuk slid in safely just ahead of the tag. The second run of the inning scored on a groundout, pushing the Cardinals’ lead to 8-2.
Down, 11-2, with six outs remaining, the Pirates built an eighth-inning rally off reliever Mike Mayers.
Moroff bounced a two-run homer into the Allegheny River, where a man dived in to retrieve the soggy baseball. Bell smacked a two-run double. And after left fielder Jose Martinez dropped a routine fly ball, Diaz struck an RBI double up the gap. Diaz was thrown out going for third, and the rally died after five runs had scored.
Stephen J. Nesbitt: snesbitt@post-gazette.com and Twitter @stephenjnesbitt.
First Published: August 19, 2017, 2:35 a.m.
Updated: August 19, 2017, 9:32 p.m.